My Life: by Slim Sherman
by Sevenstars
Summary: Companion to "Jess Harper: The Story of My Life." Slim tells an interviewer the story of his background and early life.


**My Life: by Slim Sherman**

_by Sevenstars_

SUMMARY: Slim tells an interviewer the story of his background and early life.

This piece, and its companion ("Jess Harper: The Story of My Life"), came out of an ongoing exchange on an online forum I belong to; someone asked how you could be certain that each character had his own unique "voice," and someone else suggested having each one tell his life story in his own words. I decided to have Slim and Jess do it, just to see if I could.

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I was baptized Matthew Jacob Sherman, Jr., after my father, but ever since I went on my first trail drive the year I was thirteen, most folks have called me Slim. I spent my first fifteen years in Illinois, in the Quincy Hills country where the Mississippi makes a big bulge west; my father, Matt Sherman, owned fourteen quarter-sections of land in Hancock County, about six miles out of Carthage, which was the county seat and the main town—almost the only town, to be honest. Pa was almost thirty-nine when I was born, which was the fourth of January, 1843; he'd started out, thirty years earlier, drivin' cattle to feed the Army durin' the second war with England, then gone on to blacksmith's helper, logger, wagonmakin', gunsmithin', freightin' down the Santa Fe Trail, mustangin', carryin' trade goods to the mountain men's rendezvous, and later drivin' cattle out of the new Republic of Texas and doin' some independent Indian tradin' of his own, and servin' in a militia outfit during the Mexican War when I was just three or four—he was voted sergeant, and came out with scrip for 2730 acres of public land. Ma was twenty-seven, a doctor's daughter from Vandalia, much better educated than he was; she'd never really planned to marry, and had been the principal of a young ladies' school for nine years before they met. Pa's people were out of the Virginia up-country by way of Kentucky and Ohio, which was where he was born, and Ma's landed in Baltimore from around Dublin in the seventeenth century and spread out from there; there's English blood in me, and a little French, and Scandinavian Viking on both sides, and Irish, of course, from Ma.

Pa always thought of himself more as a stockman than a farmer; he'd never really wanted to be anythin' but a rancher, even before he learned the word, which he did in Santa Fe when he was eighteen or so. Back then, except for Texas, most of the big beef-raisin' and -finishin' business was done in the Midwest, a lot of it by people like Pa who'd come originally from the Upper South or the Carolinas. He raised some grain and hay, mostly for his own stock, and had an orchard, and of course there were milk cows and poultry and pigs and a truck patch, but most of his land was in meadows for the beef—he never had less than fifty breedin' head of cattle, shorthorns and Herefords, and sometimes up to a hundred, besides the increase. As far back as I can remember, he always said that when he'd gotten a big enough stake, we'd sell out and go West and raise cattle the way they did it in New Mexico, on ranges much bigger than anything east of the Mississippi, and I guess hearin' that all my life, I got to thinkin' of myself as bein' a rancher too some day.

We had a good life in Hancock County, even though most of the warm weather Pa would be off doin' whatever it was to earn money for our ranch, and Ma and I would be left to run the place, with Mrs. Browning, our hired girl—actually she was past forty when I was born, a widow—to help around the house, and a hand to do the heavy work, things like plowin' and cuttin' hay and gettin' in firewood. We raised most of our own food and took fish and small game off the land, and there was always money enough for little fancies, nice bolt goods for Ma to make dresses of, a full set of transfer-print china, good country furniture, curtains for the windows, flowers in the yard, books—Ma loved to read—and prints to hang on the walls, and a guitar for her to play. Pa gave me a horse of my own when I was eight and brought me a lariat the next year, and I used to spend most of my time herdin' our cattle; learned to shoot that year, too, so we'd have a chance of somethin' to eat besides pork while he was away. I went to school down at the crossroads about four months out of the year—I think I really_ learned_ more at home, from Ma and the books we had, but at least I got some practice dealin' with all different kinds of people; there were townies and farm kids both at that school, it was only about a mile past the town limits, so most of the kids from that side of Carthage went there. I had aunts and uncles and cousins from both sides livin' scattered around the county, and there was a lot of visitin' back and forth between households, especially in winter when the work was slack and Pa was home and we could get in a sleigh and go dashin' off over good packed-down snow. If we stayed home, Pa would fix guns and clocks—he had a regular winter sideline in 'em, all the neighbors brought theirs when they needed repair—while Ma and Mrs. Browning did their sewin', or maybe Ma would play her guitar and we'd sing, or we'd play games—Pa was a demon at checkers—or he'd tell stories about his travels and the people he'd met, Indians and mountain men and traders and soldiers and ranchers. All my life I saw that he and Ma were as much in love as a couple of newlyweds; the only real sorrow in their lives was that Ma couldn't seem to bear any children strong enough to live, except me. She had four miscarriages, a stillborn son, and one son and two daughters who didn't see their second birthdays, all before I went on that first cattle drive; it wasn't till I was nearly fifteen that she had one that thrived, my kid brother Andy.

By the time I was seven Pa had worked up to bein' a trail boss, and a respected one; he'd go down to San Antonio every spring and hook up with his old friend Ed Farrell, who served as his _segundo_ and dealt with the cattlemen, gettin' a herd together, and then they'd drive up the Shawnee Trail, first to St. Louis, later to the river towns. Some years he'd take three herds up in a single season. He had a good name in Texas, I've been told. I wanted to go with him so badly—I started beggin' to be taken along when I was only ten, but he said I had to finish the grades first. So I did, and the next season he took me, '56, that was, and I was horse wrangler, and rode drag the year after. I made a couple of good friends that first drive, but they both died—Ed's son Mike, who was about my age, and Joey Redhawk, who was mostly Indian, Chickasaw and Comanche, out of the Nations, and sixteen; he was the one who gave me my nickname, though he gave it to me in Comanche. And I met Jonesy, bless him—he was our cook; he and Pa had met back during the Mexican War, and Jonesy had cooked for Pa's crews ever since.

In '58 Pa finally decided he had enough of a stake, and we sold the farm and packed up and joined a wagon train out of Kansas City; I wasn't quite fifteen and a half, and Andy was only about six months old. Jonesy came too; he said his sacroiliac had had enough of sleepin' on the ground half the year. That was when we came to Laramie, though back then it was still called Dancytown and didn't have more than fifty or sixty people livin' in it; Pa had found a little valley he liked, back when he was Indian-tradin' in these parts, and that was where he settled us. I still remember how it hit me between the eyes to find that we had mountains right in our front yard; prairie I knew, but not mountains.

Pa had hoped to get us away from the trouble brewin' over slavery, but of course that couldn't happen as long as we lived in an American Territory. When the war broke out I was eighteen, and I didn't even have to think about what I had to do. Pa and I had a couple of pretty sharp disagreements over it; he kept sayin' it was north-and-south business, not Western business, and he needed me here to help him build the place, but what I think he was most afraid of was that I'd end up killin' my Uncle Ben Sherman, his favorite brother, who'd gone South years before, or maybe one of my cousins. He'd been in one war of his own and on the edge of another, too, and I guess maybe he wanted to spare me what he knew would have to be just that much worse because of bein' one people split up against each other. All I knew was that I had to do what I could to save the Union. Of course Territories aren't called on to furnish troops, so I had to go East to enlist. I signed up in Davenport, Iowa, with the First Iowa Cav, got voted sergeant-major, then transferred to the Second, spent a little time on General Sherman's staff—no, he's no relation—after I got a battlefield commission to second lieutenant at Shiloh, then went to Virginia with General Barton as a replacement and spent most of the war in the Third Indiana. It wasn't till two months after it had happened that I heard of Pa's death; he was guidin' a Cavalry detachment that was escortin' a shipment of Denver gold dust, and came home shot up and half frozen—Ma and Jonesy did what they could for him, but he died a week later. He never could tell 'em exactly what had happened; I didn't find out the whole story for almost ten years. I couldn't get away till after the war ended, and by then the place was gettin' pretty run down. There wasn't much money—Pa had been sinkin' most of what he had into land and cattle—and I had to take over without a break, tryin' to save it and support my family and be a father to Andy. It didn't help that a lot of folks around here suspected Pa had had somethin' to do with the detachment never bein' seen again, and some of 'em didn't mind sayin' so. I got in more than one fight over that, the next two or three years. And I met a girl I thought I could make a life with, but she had different notions. And then Ma got sick and died, and I felt so guilty that I'd never been able to make it up with Pa... lookin' back, that was about the roughest time in my life, workin' almost non-stop and cuttin' every corner I could, tryin' to earn enough cash to keep us goin' till I could rebuild the place, once havin' to clear myself of a rustlin' charge, dealin' with the losses, and all without much help; Andy was too young, and Jonesy could only work around the headquarters because of his back.

One break I got, though: the Overland changed their route and asked if we wanted to provide relay-station service, and that was seventy-five dollars every month, plus hay and feed, strap and bar iron for repairs on the coaches, and somethin' toward groceries, so I jumped at it. But it was a lot of extra work, and while I could'a' handled it or the cattle by myself, both together got to be a little beyond me. I don't know what I'd have done if Jess hadn't turned up...

He told you that? Yeah, he is, no question about it—not any more. I often wish Ma and Pa could'a' known him; they'd have accepted him as another son, just as Andy and I made him our brother.

It wasn't easy at first. Not because of the war, he doesn't—didn't—hold any ill feelin' about that, except toward the CO of that prison camp he was in, those couple of months after he got out of the hospital. It was just that he'd had nobody and nothin' for ten years, had got to thinkin' he probably never would, and focusin' on findin' Bannister the way he was, makin' a name as a fast gun, he'd gotten into some bad habits and made some bad enemies, plus he'd come to need freedom almost as much as he needed air to breathe, and he couldn't see how to make that fit with what he was findin' here. But he wanted to, at the same time, 'cause he'd grown up in a close-knit family, just like us, and I think he missed it somethin' awful. I thank God for Jonesy; he had his doubts about Jess at first, just as I did, but he also had thirty-odd years' experience on me, and I think he saw the real Jess Harper long before I could—plus he saw that Andy had taken to him, and he knew Andy had Ma's gift for readin' people, which was somethin' Pa had counted on all their years together. Between the two of 'em, and Jess makin' an honest effort that must have cost him, we worked it out, and before a year had gone by I realized that he was the best friend I'd ever had, or probably ever would.

Yeah, we're doin' pretty well here now. Jess made all the difference. It took us till '75 to get up to just under a thousand head of beef, but we kept improvin' the breed, and with his gift with horses we could get deeper into those, which bring in more per head. Picked up more than a few rewards for the bad ones we took out of circulation, too. Cleared the mortgage the second year he was here, thanks to one of 'em; bought the Halloran place after a bad horse put Roy in a wheelchair—'73, that was; bought out a few failed homesteaders, got some more land up in the higher country... we're gettin' to be pretty successful, nothin' like Cole Rogers or Bob Wilson or even Reed McCaskey, but respectable. Best of all, I've got a friend I know I can always count on. Don't tell him this—he'd be impossible to live with if he knew, though I wouldn't be surprised if he'd guessed _[grins]_—but there's not a day I don't give thanks it was this ranch he wandered onto that day...


End file.
